Integrated circuit (IC) fabrication involves use of masks. The number of masks for fabricating an IC corresponds to the number of layers in the IC. Thus, the mask cost for fabricating an IC increases with the increasing number of layers in an IC. Additionally, each sized IC requires its own set of masks. Thus, fabricating ICs of N different sizes requires N times as many masks as fabricating ICs of one size, where N is an integer greater than one.
One proposed solution for reducing mask costs for fabricating multiple size ICs involves the use of masks having tiles of the same size for all masks needed for fabricating the ICs. These same masks are used for fabricating all layers of the ICs of the different sizes. Thereafter, the size of the IC fabricated is determined by the number of tiles included in the IC that is cut from the wafer. In this proposed solution, each tile has connections with all the tiles next to it. When a tile is separated from its neighboring tile, the connections between the tile and the neighboring tile are exposed. This creates reliability problems.